Monday, October 30, 2006

Best/worst road trip ever...

I haven't posted in a while and that's pretty much because I've been following local football and soccer teams across the state, but I thought I would write a little about that.

Friday, Travis and I made a little trip to Murray, Ky. to do a radio broadcast of football game and it went from the single greatest road trip we had ever had to make to the worst ever in about 5 minutes time.

First off, it rained off and on the entire 125 miles of the trip down there, but we found the restaurant we were looking for without even having to turn around. Bonus.

It's called Jasmine and it's in Murray and it is a Thai/Japanese place that is very nice, reasonably priced and the sushi was dynamite. Travis enjoyed his pad thai noodles as well.

We got our food and we had plenty of time to eat and make the game. We get out of the restaurant just lovin' life because we made great time getting down there, had a great meal and it had stopped raining. And on top of that, we figured our team was going to win big too, so we were primed for a very successful and enjoyable road trip.

Until...

We get to the football stadium and find that the press box is a small block building just tall enough to stand up in. Then we find out that everyone covering our team was assigned to a single section of the press box only big enough to comfortably seat three people along with some coaches. Unfortunately, there ended up being five of us and one was filming the game and couldn't see the whole field from one specific spot in the press box so he kind of had to move around.

Travis and I decide to take one for the team and run our headsets out of the press box into the bleachers right in front of the press box. Also note that it had been raining for the previous 48 hours and the bleachers were made of concrete meaning they held water like a bowl so if we didn't stand on top of the slick metal bleachers we were standing in an inch or two of water.

Then it started raining.

The wind started swirling around and it was a very cold, wet and miserable broadcast. Then on top of all that, our team lost badly to a team that barely averaged a touchdown per game in a mud bog of a game and they didn't make the playoffs because of it. Well, that and another game that didn't go our way. It also rained pretty much the entire 125 miles back as well.

So it jumped from best ever to probably worst ever road trip we've made.

Saturday I got to go back down to far west Kentucky for a soccer match and since our team won I gotta go cover them in eastern Kentucky this week. Between traveling the world over following the local sports teams and getting new computers at the office and working on the big basketball preview, I'm about ready for everything to stop and the school year is only a quarter of the way through.

The good news is that fall sports are over this Saturday and basketball is up next and I won't have to worry about tromping around in mud and rain.

3 comments:

To be fair, you're going to Central Kentucky this weekend. Just because "Eastern Kentucky University" will be a short 45 minute trip to your south doesn't mean that you're in Eastern Kentucky. The school name is a bit of a misnomer.

The road trip was still enjoyable. Despite the incredibly adverse conditions, I enjoyed the good food, conversation and fall colors enough to call it a mild success. The team's performance, while frustrating, has basically jaded me all season long, so I was numb.

At least we're certain to be nominated for a Pulitzer for that broadcast done from the worst of conditions.

You did forget to mention that our loss coupled with the win by Butler County allowed a team to get into the playoffs that hasn't seen the postseason in 24 years.